Leone Dorothy, Levy Erika S
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2015 Apr;58(2):213-26. doi: 10.1044/2015_JSLHR-S-13-0285.
Much of a child's day is spent listening to speech in the presence of background noise. Although accurate vowel perception is important for listeners' accurate speech perception and comprehension, little is known about children's vowel perception in noise. Clear speech is a speech style frequently used by talkers in the presence of noise. This study investigated children's identification of vowels in nonsense words in noise and examined whether adults' use of clear speech would result in the children's more accurate vowel identification.
Two female American-English (AE) speaking adults were recorded producing the nonsense word /gəbVpə/ with AE vowels /ɛ-æ-ɑ-ʌ/ in phrases in conversational and clear speech. These utterances were presented to 15 AE-speaking children (ages 5.0-8.5 years) at a signal-to-noise ratio of -6 dB. The children repeated the utterances.
Clear-speech vowels were repeated significantly more accurately (87%) than conversational-speech vowels (59%), suggesting that clear speech aids children's vowel identification. Children repeated one talker's vowels more accurately than the other's, and front vowels more accurately than central and back vowels.
The findings support the use of clear speech for enhancing adult-to-child communication in AE in noisy environments.
儿童一天中的大部分时间是在有背景噪音的情况下听语音。虽然准确的元音感知对于听众准确的语音感知和理解很重要，但关于儿童在噪音环境中的元音感知却知之甚少。清晰语音是说话者在有噪音的情况下经常使用的一种语音风格。本研究调查了儿童在噪音环境中对无意义单词中元音的识别，并检验了成人使用清晰语音是否会使儿童的元音识别更准确。
记录两名说美式英语（AE）的成年女性，她们在对话语音和清晰语音的短语中用AE元音/ɛ-æ-ɑ-ʌ/说出无意义单词/gəbVpə/。这些话语以-6 dB的信噪比呈现给15名说AE的儿童（年龄在5.0至8.5岁之间）。孩子们重复这些话语。
清晰语音中的元音重复准确率（87%）显著高于对话语音中的元音（59%），这表明清晰语音有助于儿童的元音识别。孩子们重复一位说话者的元音比另一位更准确，重复前元音比中元音和后元音更准确。
研究结果支持在嘈杂环境中使用清晰语音来加强成人与儿童之间用美式英语进行的交流。
